David Fabrizio's Biography

David Fabrizio, Leader, Cancer Immunotherapy, Foundation Medicine

Leader, Cancer Immunotherapy
Foundation Medicine, Inc.
Cambridge, MA

David Fabrizio has over 12 years of experience in the drug discovery industry, and more recently in the application of next generation sequencing technologies to discover methods for cancer immunotherapy response. David’s early work helped lead to the discovery of a novel BMP signaling molecule, RGMb (DRAGON), which was later discovered to be a receptor for the immune checkpoint PDL2, and was published in the Journal of Biochemistry in 2005. David joined Adnexus Therapeutics in 2004, and went on to develop novel checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapies, helping to lead the PD1/PDL1 pre-clinical drug discovery effort which was eventually acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb in 2007. Additionally, his work lead to several issued patents, including for those describing novel EGFR and IGFR targeting therapeutics, as well as a method for improved drug pharmacokinetics through novel human serum albumin binding motifs. While at BMS, David also invented a novel drug selection technology, ASCENT, to rapidly identify protein based therapeutic binders using a reconstituted mRNA/protein fusion system. In 2013, David joined the startup, AbVitro, and focused on developing an NGS immune cell sequencing/antigen target identification technology, which was recently acquired by Juno Therapeutics. David joined Foundation medicine in 2015, and currently leads the Cancer Immunotherapy group, which is utilizing NGS techniques to identify methods for the identification of responders to immunotherapies, including checkpoint inhibitors.